Sunday, 9 February 2014

Paperman is a 2012 animated short and the first Disney animated
short film to win an Oscar since 1969. Released alongside the feature length Wreck-It Ralph, it’s a seven minute
movie about a chance encounter and longing for love. Set in 1940s New York City, George is
waiting for his elevated train to work when a gust of wind throws one of his
papers into the face of a pretty girl waiting on the same platform. Her lips
leave a lipstick imprint on the paper and the duo laugh coyly at the incident
before she gets onto her train. Later the same day, George is thinking about
the incident while looking out of his office window when he spots the woman in
a room on the other side of the street. In an attempt to draw her attention, he
makes paper aeroplanes, launching them towards her open window.

Paperman is beautifully drawn with clean black and white lines and
wonderful period detail. It’s reminiscent of the Hollywood Golden Age and
features lovely period design. The animation is elegant and very much in
keeping with classic Disney. Both central characters appear to have been taken
from the stock character cupboard at Disney with Meg taking the form of a
Disney Princess in mid century attire and George as the affable and harmless
Prince in a suit. Although the animation is very ‘Disney’, it also smacks of
realism. The expressions and movement speaks of the animation we all know and
love but the background, tone and environment are much more realistic looking
than in the cartoons of Disney’s heyday. The use of light is also evocative and
adds to the sense of romance that the short exudes throughout. It also helps to
capture that Golden Age vibe.

The plot is simple and sweet and
something everyone can relate to. It’s based on the idea of a brief connection
or spark between two people, something that those of us in large cities must
feel often. I think that most people would have spotted a look or glance or
caught eyes with a stranger and wondered what they might be like or how you’d
get on. This takes that idea and runs with it. Like a lot of recent animated
shorts, it’s incredibly simple but brilliantly effective. My only complaint is
with the anthropomorphism of the paper in the final moments. It works well but
I enjoyed the realism of the earlier stages. Overall though, this is yet
another example of the kind of talent and creativity that Disney Animation
Studios has to offer and like so many recent shorts, I enjoyed it more than its
feature companion.

Friday, 7 February 2014

Five days ago I got a little
giddy with excitement over the one hundredth anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s
debut screen appearance. Today, February 7th 2014 marks another
centenary; the anniversary of the first screen appearance of Chaplin’s defining
character, the little fellow, his tramp. Released on this day a century ago, Kid Auto Races at Venice was Chaplin’s
second film to be released but wasn’t the first film for which he had donned
his famous costume. Shot a few days earlier but released two days later, Mabel’s Strange Predicament is
technically the tramp’s first film. In that film though, the tramp is very much
an also ran, part of a small cast of characters who cause a ruckus in a hotel.
Here Chaplin stands alone, as he did through much of his film career.

Just eleven minutes long, though
the version I own is seven, filming took place during a soap box derby race in Venice Beach, California.
Chaplin plays a bystander, nestled in amongst the sizable crowd who stand
respectfully at the side of the track. When the tramp notices a camera filming
the event he becomes infatuated with it, making numerous attempts to get in
front of it and generally cause a bit of trouble. This isn’t appreciated by the
director who bats the tramp away. Here in his debut film, the tramp is very
much that. He’s a mischievous vagrant with no better place to be. His cruel
streak isn’t really evident but neither is the kindness of his later feature
films. He’s a character whose personality is very much still being formed. He’s
not bad and not really mean, he’s just annoying. The tramp remained an
annoyance for many of his early appearances, taking some time to develop into
the more sincere and sympathetic character he would later become.

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Aningaaq is a short companion piece to the award winning Gravity that was written and directed by
Jonás Cuarón, son of Alfonso Cuarón. I should make it clear right away that
this review will feature spoilers so if you haven’t seen Gravity then you may not wish to continue. Have you left? Good. Aningaaq is a seven minute short that
shows a scene in Gravity from the
reverse angle. Having given up aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, Dr. Ryan Stone
(Sandra Bullock) begins to receive a faint radio transmission. Initially
believing it to originate from a Chinese Space Station, she soon realises it’s
in fact coming from Earth. This film shows us the other side of the
conversation the two people have; Stone, miles above Earth on the verge of
death and Aningaaq, an Inuit
fisherman on a frozen fjord.

Aningaaq begins with a long, slow panning shot which depicts the
inhospitable icy surroundings in which the Inuit fisherman finds himself
living. This connects beautifully with the story of Gravity in that both characters are separated from their species by
many miles and life snatching surroundings. Both films share the same eerie
silence, further promoting the idea of bleakness and exposure. Unlike the
blackness of space though, Aningaaq is shown in a near white out, the exact
opposite of Dr. Stone.

Sunday, 12 January 2014

Get a Horse! Is a dazzling and enchanting Disney animated short
that was featured prior to the feature length film Frozen in cinemas. Wonderfully mixing antique and modern animation
it’s a feast for the eyes and a reminder of how good Disney once was and what
it’s capable of today. Directed by Lauren MacMullen, the first woman to solo
direct a Disney film, it takes inspiration from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr with its stepping through
the screen antics.

The plot follows the typical type
of early Mickey Mouse short. Using hand drawn, black and white animation,
Mickey is enjoying a musical wagon ride with Minnie Mouse when they are pounced
upon by the wicked Peg-Leg Pete in his automobile. Spying Minnie, Pete attempts
to steal her from our hero and drive off into the sunset with her as his prize.
Following a brief fight, Mickey and his steed Horace are literally pushed
through the cinema screen and become bold, brightly coloured modern versions of
themselves. Hilarity then ensues as the fight goes back and forth between monochrome
and colour, old and new.

I thought this film was
incredibly witty and inventive. Initially I assumed the short was a re-release
of an old classic and had no idea that the characters were about to be launched
into the 21st Century. The traditional black and white animation is
exquisite and the soundtrack is excellent to match. I’m not as much a fan of
the newer style but that might just be my old codger-ness coming through.
Throughout its seven minute runtime, the film was drawing laughs from young and
old in the cinema and was hopefully introducing the younger members of the
audience to the wonderful older style of animation. The score is bouncy and
full of brass and made my feet bop along from start to finish while it also makes use of archive audio to capture the real voices of Walt Disney, Marcellite Garner and Billy Bletcher, all long deceased. This really is a
wonderful Disney short, the best I’ve seen in ages.

Sunday, 5 January 2014

Un Chien Andalou is a short, silent surrealist film from 1929. It
was the debut film of Luis Buñuel and was written by Buñuel and fellow
surrealist Salvador Dalí. The film features no discernable narrative in the
traditional sense but rather dream logic, seemingly popping from one scene to
another, often with tenuous links. Lasting only around sixteen minutes, it
nonetheless crams in many eye catching (and eye slitting) images, some of which
have passed into the collective consciousness. Describing the plot is near
impossible as it weaves in and out of normality and plausibility with no regard
for sense or building upon what comes before. Perhaps best described as a
series of vignettes or windows into the minds of the men behind the film, it’s
sometimes a frustrating watch but is notable for its striking imagery and skilled
production.

Saturday, 13 July 2013

Seeing Monsters University puts me in the strange situation of seeing a
sequel (or prequel in this case) before the original movie. Like a lot of
people I’m a huge Pixar fan but 2001’s Monsters.
Inc is one of two Pixar features which I haven’t got around to seeing yet.
The central characters Mike and Sully are so well known though that I didn’t
think my ignorance of the first movie would hamper my enjoyment of this one.
Thankfully it didn’t. Pixar managed to hamper it all by themselves.

Monsters University
takes us back to our central character’s college days where they first meet on
the campus of the University of the movie’s title. The ambitious and book smart
Mike (Billy Crystal) initially doesn’t get along with the confident and naturally
scary Sully (John Goodman) and their falling out leads to their expulsion from
Scare 101. The pair discovers that their only way back onto the course is to
enter and win the University’s Scare Games. To do this they must join a
fraternity but the only one that will accept them is a group of no-hopers. Will
they be able to shape themselves and their team into first class scarers or
will their dream of turning professional be lost?

Friday, 4 January 2013

Arriving on the back of his first great film The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s The Idle Class feels weak and thin in
comparison. The writer in Chaplin was struggling for ideas before he got the
spark for The Kid and it almost feels
as though he is back to square one while writing the two reel The Idle Class. A Tramp (Chaplin) gets
off a train, and not how you’d expect him to, before heading for a day at the golf
course. Meanwhile a wealthy wife (Edna Purviance) also disembarks expecting her
well to do husband (also Chaplin) to meet her at the station but he is drunk at
home. Following some hi jinks at the golf course there is a case of mistaken
identity at a ball at which Edna takes the Tramp for her husband.

For me The Idle Class
lacks the depth which made The Kid
great and also lacks the direction and laughs that are found in the likes of A Dog's Life or Shoulder Arms. It occasionally takes a more dramatic route but this
often fails to match even Sunnyside
for dramatic narrative. The film is saved by a middle act on the golf course
which is brilliantly inventive and funny but is unfortunately bookended by a
beginning and end which did little for me.

Tuesday, 1 January 2013

Rescued by Rover
is a 1905 film which along with the likes of The Great Train Robbery(1903) helped to bridge the gap between
films that were a mere curiosity or fairground attraction towards the narrative
structure which dominated the following century and continues today. The film
makes use of the recent invention of the cut or edit to slice together the
action surrounding a baby which is kidnapped by a beggar woman. It mostly
follows a dog as it seeks out the missing child to alert its owner, the baby’s
father. Although by today’s standards the plot is fairly predictable and quite
repetitive, for the time it was groundbreaking. Just five years earlier the
Hepworth Manufacturing Company was producing films which although interesting
were single shot amusements, now in 1905 they had produced a proper narrative
film which is much more coherent than any contemporary film I’ve seen so far.

There are several areas in which this film is inventive or pioneering.
The first is perhaps the most important. Rescued
by Rover was the first film to ever feature paid actors. Before this time
roles were filled by the crew, friends or sometimes passers by. Here though two
actors, one of which was May Clark, are employed in a cast which also features Director Cecil Hepworth’s
wife, child, dog as well as himself. The film is also noted as being the first
to create an animal star. The dog, Blair, became famous for several years
following the film’s release and is also one of the best trained I’ve seen on
screen.

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Although often regarded as Chaplin’s least funny First National film, A Day’s Pleasure is a
simple but effective two reel comedy which considering the circumstances behind
its creation, is something of a triumph. While Chaplin was busy working on his
first great film, The Kid, the studio
were growing impatient with his lack of output so he hastily put together A Day’s Pleasure, a seventeen minute
romp set around a family outing aboard a boat. While the film lacks the sort of
story and romance of the films Chaplin was capable of producing at the time, it
does feature some clever slapstick and laugh out loud moments.

The movie is notable for two brief cameos. The first is a
shot of The Chaplin Studios, seen in the background of the opening scene.
Although only briefly glimpsed, you can clearly see its isolation, allowing one
to note how L.A has grown over the last ninety years. The second cameo comes
from Jackie Coogan, the boy made famous by his heartfelt performance in Chaplin’s
next film, The Kid. Coogan is barely
seen though and has no role other than to sit in a car and get carried onto the
boat by his father. The only other actor to have much of a part is Tom Wilson,
a man who appeared in four of Chaplin’s films as well as D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance
and Birth of a Nation as well as over two-hundred more. Wilson plays a man with whom Charlie fights
following a spousal mix-up. Even Edna Purviance goes without character here,
perhaps going to show how rushed the production was.

Saturday, 3 November 2012

Set partly amongst the trenches of the First World War, Shoulder Arms was a bold film for
Charlie Chaplin to make in 1918 given the wide reaching criticism he received
for failing to sign up to fight. He was advised by close friends to abandon the
film for something less controversial but Charlie battled on and despite the
possible outrage and backlash the film became Chaplin’s most critically
acclaimed and financially successful film up to that point, was particularly
popular with returning Doughboys and features a couple of scenes which may well
be recognisable to people who have never even seen a full Chaplin film.

Charlie plays a young recruit who is sent over to France to join
the war. Despite typical problems to begin with he soon discovers that he is a
more than competent soldier and after numerous brave exploits ends up in the
house of a French woman (Edna Purviance) who tends to his wounds. With the help
of his new love and a dear friend from the trenches, Chaplin ends up winning
the war for the allies. Or does he?

Sunday, 21 October 2012

A half reel propaganda film, funded by and starring Charlie
Chaplin, The Bond is a unique film in
Chaplin’s cannon in that it is the only film he ever made to be filmed in front
of a plain black set. There are just a few dimly lit props littered around the
stage alongside the actors, Chaplin regulars Edna Purviance, Albert Austin and
Sydney Chaplin. The film depicts several sketches along the theme of bonds,
from friendship to marriage to the most important, Liberty Bonds.

Though not in the least bit funny the film is still an
interesting watch and Chaplin’s simple to understand depiction of what Bonds
actually did would have been seen by millions of people across the world. In a
very simple sketch Chaplin offers up his savings to Uncle Sam who in turn gives
it to Industry who finally furnishes soldiers with rifles. The idea is simple
and easy to understand despite the lack of dialogue. In the final scene,
Chaplin uses a large hammer with the words Liberty Bonds engraved on the side
to smash the Kaiser into submission, thereby further expressing the idea of the
difference the bonds can make.

Monday, 15 October 2012

Having ended his contract with the Mutual Film Corporation
amicably, Charlie Chaplin signed the world’s first One Million Dollar movie
contract in June 1918. This contract gave him total control over production for
a return of eight films. Chaplin decided to build a new studio off Sunset
Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The famous Chaplin Studios were
designed in the style of English country cottages and contained everything
Chaplin would need to develop, film and cut his movies. Chaplin eventually sold
the studios in 1953 and they are now owned by Jim Henson Company.

Chaplin began work on his first film for First National in
early 1918 and A Dog’s Life was
released in April. Over the next four years Chaplin shot eight films at his new
studio for First National during one of the most turbulent times of his career.
In September 1918 he married the seventeen year old actress Mildred Harris in
what was and still is a highly controversial marriage. Harris lied to Chaplin
about being pregnant and the marriage ended in a messy divorce in 1920. During
the same period the star became frustrated with First National’s impatience and
lack of concern for quality and in 1919, while still under contract with First
National created United Artists with fellow actors and directors Mary Pickford,
Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith. The venture which was self funded and
offered the Hollywood
stars the chance to work freely and independently although Chaplin himself
didn’t make a film with the company until 1922 as he was still under contract
with First National.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Chaplin’s final film in his Mutual contract and marking the
end of a brief but fruitful relationship is The
Adventurer. A convict (Chaplin) is on the run from Prison Guards on the
coast when he hears the sounds of people crying out for help. He comes across three
people who are drowning having fallen off a nearby pier and saves each of them
one by one. One of the people he saves is an attractive young woman (Edna
Purviance) who invites the man back to her house to rest without knowing his
past. As the two begin to get on very well, the convict’s past catches up with
him thanks to the persistence of the young girl’s suitor (Eric Campbell).

Chaplin’s final outing for Mutual is a more than decent
short which features some genuinely laugh out loud moments in addition to a
well tailored story and plenty of trademark slapstick. What makes it stand out
for me though is not only was it the last film Chaplin made for the Mutual Corporation
but it was also his last to feature regular adversary Eric Campbell who
tragically died just a couple of months after the film’s release in a drink driving
accident. Chaplin and Campbell were very close friends, living next door to one
another when the latter died and Chaplin never again cast a regular actor to
play his antagonist.

Thursday, 4 October 2012

An improvement on the comedy of Easy Street but a film with much more of a slapstick nature, The Cure finds Charlie Chaplin playing
an inebriate who checks into a health spa in order to get sober. His huge suitcase
though is full to bursting with bottles of liquor which find their way into the
health spa’s well with disastrous consequences. Along the way Chaplin befriends
Edna Purviance after saving her from the clutches of the wicked Eric Campbell.

This is a short that is packed full of gags, some of which
are a little repetitive but many hit the nail on the head. It also features a
larger role for Chaplin regular John Rand who appears in most of Chaplin’s Mutual Films but usually just has a walk on role. In The Cure he has almost as much screen time as Campbell and
Purviance but doesn’t make as much of an impact on the film as Chaplin’s two
main collaborators. The story is tight but not wide reaching and is a lot more
basic than many of the films from the same period, but what it lacks in story
it makes up for with laughs. Chaplin’s dizziness following his turn in the
revolving door also gave him the same symptoms as he showed nearly twenty years
later in Modern Times when he ‘took’
cocaine. His walk and spinning was almost identical and equally amusing.

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Charlie Chaplin as his Tramp character is asleep outside a Mission, close to the
danger filled and lawless Easy Street. After being partially reformed by the Mission where he meets a
beautiful young woman (Edna Purviance), the Tramp decides to join the Police
and is immediately sent out on the beat to Easy Street, a road from where
Police return battered and bruised. Through luck and wit the new Policeman
tries to reform the street and return it to the local residents.

Comedy wise this is probably the most disappointing of
Chaplin’s Mutual Films that I’ve seen so far. In the entire film I only laughed
out loud once and generally there were very few funny moments anywhere. What the
film does contain though is another tender story about overcoming the odds,
hard work, temperance and love which is something that Chaplin was becoming the
master of at this stage of his career.

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

A waiter (Charlie Chaplin) gets into trademark mischief at
work and then goes to a skating rink on his lunch break. There he meets a
pretty girl (Edna Purviance) and the two of them hit it off. The waiter has a
confrontation though with a customer (Eric Campbell) who recognises him from
the restaurant and the two start bickering and fighting while skating. Having
left the rink, the girl invites the waiter to her skating party that night but instead
of revealing his real job he tells her that he is Sir Cecil Seltzer. Later, at
the party, people who had met during the day once again meet up as various
strands of the story come together, resulting in a fast paced chase ending.

I was a little bored by the first half of this film which
was set mainly in a restaurant, but my enjoyment grew as the action turned to
the rink. There Chaplin was able to showcase his remarkable skating skills and
ability to bully his co star Eric Campbell in an ever changing variety of ways.
The second half more than makes up for the lacklustre opening and left me with
a smile on my face if not a laughter induced stomach ache.

Saturday, 8 September 2012

Behind the Screen stars
Charlie Chaplin as a stagehand on a movie set. Chaplin is overworked and
underappreciated and his boss (Eric Campbell) spends most of the time asleep,
leaving Chaplin to do the heavy lifting. Meanwhile a young woman (Edna
Purviance) is trying to get her big break as an actress but is turned down so
dresses up as a male stagehand in order to have at least some involvement in
the movies. At the same time the fellow stagehands go on strike for being woken
up by a studio boss and plot their revenge…

This isn’t one of the funniest Mutual shorts but it
certainly has one of the better plots up to this point. It’s multilayered and features side plot
as well as the main narrative. It is also an opportunity to see behind the
scenes of an early movie set in much the same way as His New Job, Chaplin’s first film for Essanay a year earlier. What
the film is most famous for now though is its forthright joke about
homosexuality, a subject which was barely mentioned in cinema for another fifty
years.

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Charlie Chaplin’s sixth film for Mutual is one with very
high highs and disappointingly low lows. It features a scenario and story which
doesn’t really go anywhere but also features several moments of slapstick that
are amongst his best to date.

Chaplin stars as a pawnshop assistant and gets in a long
running fight with fellow employee John Rand. Typically inept at his job,
Chaplin is eventually fired only to be taken back on straight away after his
boss Henry Bergman has a change of heart. Meanwhile Chaplin’s attentions are
drawn to Bergman’s daughter Edna Purviance who is busy baking in the back of
the shop. Trouble appears late on as a thief, Eric Campbell enters the shop
intent on taking it for everything it’s got.

Monday, 3 September 2012

Charlie Chaplin’s fifth film for Mutual is a somewhat simpler
film than its immediate predecessors The
Vagabond and One A.M. and is more
reminiscent of his Essanay work, albeit it more sophisticated and slightly
funnier. Chaplin plays an inept Tailor’s assistant who gets fired for burning a
Count’s trousers. His boss (Eric Campbell) finds an invitation to a party at
the house of Miss Moneybags (Edna Purviance) and decides to impersonate the
rich Count in order to marry the attractive, rich girl. Chaplin is also at the
party having snuck in through the back door and beats Campbell to the impersonation. All hell
breaks lose though when the real Count arrives, along with the Police to chase
out the imposters.

The Count features
lots of funny moments but lacks the knockout blow of the likes of One A.M. or The Bank. It’s testament to the quality of Chaplin’s Mutual films
that I felt disappointed by The Count even
though it is far superior to a lot of his Essanay films.

Monday, 27 August 2012

Charlie Chaplin’s forth film for the Mutual Film Company is
a unique two reeler in which he is almost the only person on screen for the
film’s entirety. Apart from an establishing scene featuring Albert Austin as a
disgruntled cab driver, Chaplin has the film to himself as he struggles to get
up to bed whilst drunk. Chaplin arrives home at 1am to find numerous inanimate
objects in his way in his quest for a nights sleep.

In this twenty-six minute short a drunken Chaplin is scared
by stuffed animals, baffled by a revolving table, constantly defeated by a
flight of stairs before being bested by a fold away bed. Chaplin takes inspiration
from the drunken character that made him famous in England with the Fred Karno
Company, the very same character that drew the attention of Mack Sennett and
gave him his break in the movie industry.